Soviet spies flagged young Boris Johnson as a potential UK leader in the 1980s — then wrote him off as a 'manic self-promoter'

According to The Telegraph, Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), the successor to the Soviet KGB, maintains a file on Boris Johnson dating back to the 1980s, when he was a student at Oxford University. The details come from a private dossier on Russian influence operations in the United Kingdom, compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele.

Steele's report says that even during Johnson's student years, Soviet intelligence believed he might one day lead the United Kingdom. They noted a young man who "was highly active in his educational and social activities and showed signs of a political career that might be useful to us."

A Soviet document described Johnson as "likeable but not trustworthy" and "an eccentric, odd man, full of wit, charm, and brilliance." It said he was pleasant to deal with, a man of strong character, attentive to logical arguments and facts, though one who "could be easily manipulated" and experienced "startling flashes of instability."

Steele's report states that Soviet intelligence saw Johnson as "an individual of a comic nature, but still with strong intellectual capital." His "unusually optimistic, feel-good behavior is often allied with no principles," the dossier says, and his "irresponsible attitude" left him with "no major unbreakable affiliations to any one idea or ideology."

Soviet intelligence concluded that Johnson would not make a useful source. According to the dossier, a "manic self-promoter such as Johnson can't really be taken seriously as a candidate for any deep and lasting intelligence connection."

The former prime minister was astonished to learn that Moscow had been watching him from such an early age. Johnson told The Telegraph: "It seems incredible to me that the KGB was compiling zapiskas [memos] on Oxford undergraduates in the 1980s. No wonder they lost the Cold War."

Steele's report also names other British political figures, including political strategist Dominic Cummings, who served as Johnson's adviser and director of the pro-Brexit Vote Leave campaign; Reform UK leader Nigel Farage; and former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Russian intelligence took an interest in Cummings in the 1990s and opened a file on him even as it suspected he was "already in contact or even collaborating with MI6." He later fell out with Moscow over an affair involving a Russian cargo plane crash. Farage, meanwhile, drew the attention of General Igor Sergun, who championed him within Russian military intelligence, though other agencies were split over whether he was worth the effort. After Sergun's sudden death in January 2016, the Kremlin's interest in Farage faded.